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Category Farmers’ Market

Well it’s that time of year again when we head to the local farm stand and buy up approx. 20 acorn squash to freeze. I cut each acorn squash in half, remove the seeds, place on a cookie sheet (8 halves fit on mine) and bake for 1 hour at 375 degrees or until skins are loose and squash inside is tender. I used to brush with butter while cooking but that gets pretty messy. Once the squash is cooled down enough to handle I scoop it out into freezer bags (1- 1-1/2 cups in each), press out air, seal, date, and place into the freezer flat. Reheat a portion or two on the stove top when ready to eat, add a bit of butter and pepper, and enjoy! While at the farm stand we bought some of the last of the heirloom tomatoes to be found. After eating them I made a promise to myself to never buy grocery store tomatoes ever again. From now on heirloom tomatoes only. I found a great site online that will ship me some heirloom tomato plants come springtime- here.

We also bought some apples, new potatoes and sauerkraut and I fixed my husband a meal of baked apples, new potatoes, sauerkraut and local organic pork sausage. Great fall food!

Compost scraps from a broasted chicken dinner made a colorful photo. I’ve also put up 14 bags, with 2 cups each, of shredded zucchini- so zucchini bread, zucchini fritters, and zucchini pancakes are in our future.

This past weekend we drove down to Madison WI for our first trip this year to the Dane County Farmers’ Market. It’s been awhile. We have had several local farmers’ markets we’ve been doing business with for a couple of years now. This year much to our disappointment one of them is selling produce that looks pretty bad and their corn made me really sick. There’s an older lady that runs the stand who is very friendly and we’ve known her for years and get a kick out of her mainly because she really speaks her mind. I asked her if anyone else had complained about getting sick from the corn and she said “Well you know they use A LOT of chemicals in their fields, more now than they’ve ever used to keep up.” We know we cannot always get organic produce, and unless it is noted at the stand, we know most of what we buy has had some chemicals used. Sadly more and more I am getting sick from chemicals, additives and all the crap that’s in our food supply. So, we stopped patronizing this stand and one other that just stopped selling with no fair warning. The Dane County Farmers’ Market is the largest producers-only market in the United States. We started out for Madison at 6:00 am and got there, after a couple of stops, by 7:30 am. Even at that hour the parking ramps were packed, the streets were lined, and the throng of market goers was strong. What you do once you get there is join the moving queue. The market farmers’ are laid out in a circle that surrounds the state capitol building. So when you join you walk in a circle and when you spot something on a farmers’ table you hop out of the moving line to buy it. Once purchased back into the line you go. This can wear you out. I promise. We used to get here around 11 am–it’s really packed then. But you know, 7:30 am isn’t much better. It’s a popular market filled with lots and lots of locally grown food. We love our farmers’ and I’m such a big believer in locally grown and knowing your farmer well. It looks like we’ll have to go there a few more times so that I have plenty of produce to process for winter. It’s hard to see by the photos, but we purchased almost two weeks of produce. We were able to get 1 # of green beans, 1 head of cauliflower, broccoli, 1 squash, 4 ears of corn, 4 zucchini, 2 bunches of carrots, 1 leek, 2 cucumbers, a bunch of kale, fingerling potatoes, 4 heirloom tomatoes and a beautiful bouquet of local flowers (of course) for $15.75. You absolutely cannot beat that. Once home I set about to clean, trim and repackage the produce. I shredded the zucchini right away for zucchini bread. Our dinner menu reflects 11 days of eating this produce so that we enjoy it when it is at its freshest. Next trip will be to buy some tomatoes in bulk to make sauce with. http://janrd.com/blog/5454/divine-tomatoes